In modern factories or plants, engineering systems are provided to define processing steps in manufacturing and/or controlling certain process steps within the system. To this end, these engineering systems usually have to be coupled with the respective machines or installations to mirror the internal operating sequences within the engineering system. To this end the manufacturer or vendor of a respective machine or installation needed to provide the machine or installation with a data interface that was capable of complying with the existing standards of the engineering system to be controlled by them. However, many vendors and manufacturers of these machines either cannot provide for individual interfaces because individual functionality and interface specifications of a specific engineering system might vary from factory to factory. Thus, the factory owner must integrate new machines or installations himself by individually providing for the respective hardware and software for these new machines or installations. Moreover, new standards provide for additional functionality which often cannot be used because the existing interfaces do not support such functionality.